Water Use Restrictions In Houston—Chair Of Council Water Committee Opposes Enforcement Even During A Drought

As you may be aware, due to persistent drought conditions and declining combined reservoir storage, Stage Two Water Conservation Measures went into effect for the City of Houston earlier this month. Customers must follow the irrigation limit and schedule which was originally voluntary during the Stage One measure, i.e., limit irrigation to the hours between 12:01 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. or between 8:00 p.m. and midnight on no more than two days per week in conformity with the following schedule:

“I don’t think we can penalize and cite homeowners when we’re behind in fixing our water leaks and also talking to business and industry about reducing water consumption,” said Councilman Mike Sullivan, chairman of the Council’s Water Resource Management Committee.

I guess we should only obey the law when it suits us to do so.

How long will we be “talking to business and industry about reducing water consumption?” The drought has been going on for many weeks and months already.

Like this:

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“While this idea is not under consideration in Houston, some water policy experts suggest that the best way to limit water use during a drought is to raise the price of water.”

It works for virtually everything else, just as price controls cause shortages in virtually every product. Demand is kept artificially high and incentives for additional supply are removed. If gasoline were priced like water, you’d see similar shortages as occurred in 1973.

Shortages of almost anything are very rarely natural, and are usually the product of bad economics.